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Combinatorics Difficulty 7.6 National olympiad, round 2 Prove it Japan

Consider a figure consisting of 15 circles and 20 line segments as shown below. Each circle is labeled with a 0, 1, or 2, and we define the beauty of a labeling as the number of line segments whose endpoints are labeled with numbers that differ by 1.
Let MM be the largest possible beauty that can be achieved with any labeling. How many labelings exist that achieve the beauty of MM?

Figure 1

Note that we distinguish labelings which can be obtained from each other by rotations or reflections.

Solution

1920
A line segment for which the difference between the numbers written in the two circles at its endpoints is 1 is called a good line segment, and one that does not satisfy this condition is called a bad line segment. Let us also name the six pentagons as P1P_1 to P6P_6, as shown in the figure below.
Figure 2
Lemma. Among the five line segments that form a pentagon, at least one is a bad line segment.
Proof. Assume that all five line segments are good line segments, and we will show a contradiction. Let a,b,c,d,ea, b, c, d, e be the numbers written in the circles of the pentagon in clockwise order. Since we are assuming that all line segments are good, we have ab,bc,cd,dea-b, b-c, c-d, d-e, and eae-a are all odd numbers. Thus, their sum is also odd. However, this sum is equal to 0, which is a contradiction. ■

For each pentagon PiP_i, let bib_i be the number of bad line segments among the five line segments that form it. From the lemma, we know that bi1b_i \ge 1 for all ii. Let aa be the number of bad line segments among the ten line segments on the outer border, and let bb be the number of bad line segments among the remaining ten line segments. Then, we have a+2b=i=16bia + 2b = \sum_{i=1}^{6} b_i. Thus, we have a+2b6a + 2b \ge 6, which implies a+ba+2b23a + b \ge \frac{a+2b}{2} \ge 3. Therefore, there are at least three bad line segments in total. Conversely, if we label circles in the following way, there are exactly three bad line segments (shown bold), satisfying the given conditions. Therefore, the maximum value MM of beauty is 203=1720 - 3 = 17.

Figure 3

Consider the case where there are 3 bad line segments. By considering the equality condition of the inequality above, we have a=0a = 0 and b=3b = 3, which implies that there are no bad line segments among the outer 10 line segments. Furthermore, from i=16bi=a+2b=6\sum_{i=1}^{6} b_i = a + 2b = 6, we have bi=1b_i = 1 for each pentagon PiP_i and each of its 5 line segments has exactly 1 bad line segment. Therefore, by symmetry, the answer is 5 times the number of valid labelings when we fix one bad line segment of P1P_1 to be the bold line segment in the lower left figure. When we fix it, the arrangement of bad line segments is uniquely determined as the bold line segments shown in the lower right figure.
Figure 4

Note that the only allowed odd number is 1, a good line segment must have different parity between the ends and vice versa. Hence, the parity of labeling must be one of the following two patterns, and conversely, any labelling consistent with these patterns satisfies the condition.

Figure 5
Figure 6

There are two even numbers allowed, so there are 272^7 ways to fill in the left pattern and 282^8 ways to fill in the right pattern, for a total of 27+28=3842^7 + 2^8 = 384 ways.

Therefore, the answer is 5×384=19205 \times 384 = 1920.

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